Tea at Trianon: Sacrament and Sacrifice

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Sacrament and Sacrifice

From Vultus Christi. And by the way, the documents of Vatican II said absolutely nothing about the priest facing the people. To quote:

In a certain sense, the widespread custom of celebrating Holy Mass “facing the people” has led to an incomplete and erroneous understanding of the Holy Eucharist: the consecration of the bread and wine into the true Body and Blood of Christ is seen, not so much in view of the Sacrifice offered to God, as it is in view of the Sacrament offered to the people. This shift towards a Protestant understanding of the Most Holy Eucharist is further emphasized by the widespread practice of everyone (or nearly everyone) present feeling compelled to receive Holy Communion....

The trend among priests not to offer Holy Mass daily, except when required to do so by the parish schedule, has contributed in no small measure to three woes: 1) loss of the priest’s awareness of Holy Mass as a Sacrifice offered to God “not only for the sins, punishments, satisfactions and other necessities of the faithful who are living, but also for those departed in Christ but not yet fully purified” (Council of Trent, XXII, Chapter II); 2) a weakening of the priest’s understanding of his own personal union with Christ, not only as the sacrificing Priest who makes the offering, but also as the Victim immolated upon the altar, albeit in an unbloody manner; 3) a creeping lukewarmness that almost imperceptibly causes a priest to fall away from his “first love” and to alienate himself, by degrees, from the friendship of Christ. (Read more.)